Color may be the one of the most straightforward features utilized by humans for visual recognition and discrimination. The term "color" is often defined by such common terms as hue, saturation (also referred to as chroma), and value (also referred to as intensity or luminance) which are used to represent a particular color space. A color space is merely a representation of the different colors or color elements which comprise the respective color space.
Typically, each color space (or color gamut) is comprised of three elements which define the color space, as such, the three elements constituting the color space define the physical color space representation. Accordingly, there are a number of different theoretical physical color space representations (e.g., cubes, cones, etc.) for each individual color space. For instance, an RGB (red, green, and blue) color space may be theoretically represented as a cube, or more commonly referred to as an RGB cube. Likewise, an HSV(hue, saturation, and value) color space may be theoretically represented as a hexagonal cone, or more commonly referred to as an HSV hexcone.
The usage and representation of different color spaces is very important for those persons engaged in the field of performing color/image comparisons and analysis, such as for example, color comparisons utilized in content based searches. The graphical physical display or representation of various color spaces on a physical display system (e.g., graphic user interface (GUI) or monitor), however, has proposed a dilemma in that the various color spaces are typically represented as two different graphical components or graphical representations. For instance, a typical graphical user interface (GUI) 100, as illustrated in FIG. 1, for the viewing of the HSV color space is represented as two distinct graphical components, a first two-dimensional graphical component 105 that comprises a hue (H) element 110 and a saturation (S) element 115 of the corresponding HSV color space, and a second one-dimensional graphical component 120 that comprises a value (V) element 125 of the corresponding HSV color space.
As such, the currently used graphical representations, illustrated in FIG. 1, fail to provide a global picture of the various color elements within a color space. Moreover, the currently used graphical representations of color spaces fail to illustrate how the different color elements within a particular color space inter-relate to one another. As a result, the current representation of different color spaces on a display medium is very limited, resulting in color/imaging analysis limitations for those persons engaged in the field of color/image comparisons and analysis.
It is therefore desirable to provide graphical representations of color spaces which provide a global picture of the various color spaces used for performing color/image comparisons.